Wednesday, 16 January 2013

Castles made of Sand

There is a Japanese proverb which goes “Vision without
action is a daydream; but action without vision is a nightmare.” It
serves, so far as I am concerned, as the prefect epitaph for the Second Iraq
War. I cannot conceive of any action in either American or British
history more abysmal than the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It was a monumental
error of judgement, the consequences of which are likely to remain with us for
generations to come.

Simon Heffer and Charles Moore, two of my favourite press
columnists, have expressed some admiration in the past for Tony Blair, the
former Labour prime minister who took this country into one gung ho war after
another, the prime minister who took us into Iraq.

It perplexes me that anyone can have a good word for Blair; it
perplexes me why people are not angrier over the damage he and Gordon Brown,
his Chancellor and successor, did to the strategic and political interests of this country. Quite apart from their other sins, Blair and Brown, the two
Bs, bear joint responsibility for possibly the worst military humiliation in
British history. I’ll elaborate on this point a bit later.

Iraq,
of course was essentially the third B’s war, the B in question being George W.
Bush. I’ve not long finished The Endgame: the Inside Story of the
Struggle for Iraq,
from George W. Bush to Barack Obama by Michael Gordon and Bernard
Trainor. This important book is essentially a history of American
involvement in Iraq, which
probably means that it will have a more limited readership in England.
If so this will be a pity, for the authors have important and uncomfortable
things to say about British involvement also.

Although The Endgame, as the title suggest, purports to be
an account of the final stages of the war in Iraq, it’s actually a very good
narrative of the course of the entire conflict, exhaustive in its attention
to detail. The authors, who work for the New York Times, are military
specialists rather than professional historians. In some ways this
accounts for both the strengths and weaknesses of their book.

As a blow by blow inside view of the military and strategic
challenges faced it’s a superlative chronology. Unfortunately Gordon and
Trainor have left themselves little time to stand and stare, resulting in a
weakness in analysis. Still, given the range of resources used, including
classified cables and personal interviews, The Endgame is bound to serve as an
invaluable mine for future generations of historians.

War, as Carl von Clausewitz observed, is the continuation of
politics by other means. If so, the political comprehension of Bush and
Blair was utterly abysmal. It was the soldiers on the ground, as well as
the Iraqi people, who suffered as a consequence of their ignorance. To
slightly adapt the Roman historian Tacitus, in invading Iraq the American
president and the British prime minister made a desolation and called it
democracy.

There were a whole series of political, cultural, religious
and historical factors that should have urged caution. Saddam Hussein was
a wicked despot; of that there is no doubt. But to believe his removal
would lead to a brave new world of freedom and democracy is stunningly naïve.
The truth is that Iraq
is not so much a nation as a hornet’s nest. The invasion of 2003, with
little in the way of forward political planning, simply set the hornet’s
buzzing. The West won the war only to lose the peace.

The only virtue in Bush is that he kept his nerve and
listened to his military specialists. With the situation almost out of
control, the President committed extra fighting forces, ably commanded by
generals David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno. The so-called ‘surge’ of
2007-8, the account of which is at the heart of The Endgame, effectively broke
the back of the al-Qaeda led insurgency.

The surge was important in recovering the honour of the US military; it
was even more important in winning over Sunni tribes, disgusted by the
extremism of al-Qaeda, their former shield against Shia extremists, and the
foreign fanatics it had introduced into the country. As Gordon and Trainor say
of the surge, it was a military event that succeeded beyond any reasonable
expectation in tamping down sectarian violence and breaking the back of both
Sunni and Shia terrorism.

The relative success of the American surge stands in sharp
contrast to British performance in the south around the city of Basra. In time to
come I am convinced, as I suggested above, that what happened here will stand
alongside the most serious defeats in British military history. It was
more than that: the British Army was humiliated. The fault is not that of
the soldiers, who did their duty in the most extreme circumstances, but
sections of the senior command. The fault, above all, is that of Blair
and Brown, who gave the army a task and then starved it of the resources that
would have ensured its successful completion.

As the Americans reinforced Baghdad,
the British withdrew from Basra,
leaving it to murderous anarchy. As the Americans successfully negotiated
with Sunni leaders, the British surrendered abjectly to the Shia fanatics of
the Mahdi Army. The appeasement did little good. Even in the base
around Basra
airport, British troops came under sustained mortar and rocket attack.
The insurgency in the south was only broken after Petraeus sent American forces
to back up the regular Iraqi army. Meanwhile the British division
commander was off in Switzerland
for a spot of skiing.

The authors rightly blame the timidity of the British
government for the Basra
fiasco. But the chief political culprit of The Endgame is George W.
Bush’s successor, President Barack Obama. This was not his war, as he was
quick to demonstrate in coming to office in 2009. The chief focus on the 'war on terror' (what a disaster that has been) was shifted away from Iraq and back to Afghanistan. American troops
were gradually withdrawn from the former with the result that all the gains of
the surge have effectively been squandered. Now al-Qaeda is back; now Iran uses Iraqi airspace to send military
support to the beleaguered President Assad in Syria. All this effort, all
those lives for what exactly? – for precisely nothing. Castles made of
sand slip into the sea eventually.

12 comments:

The invasion was flawless. The US military defeated the Iraqi forces and deposed Saddam within days. It was the idiotic occupation that came unstuck. Of course, that presumes the objectives were military and political.

From the 19th century onwards the West through NGOs and military action have been trying to force Christianity and/or western democracy and values down the throats of Johnny foreigner. Johnny in the 20th century decided that he had had enough and fought back and the West have been on the back foot ever since. The actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, many other places and currently Mali were and are fruitless as any successes are short lived and more often than not counter productive. The cold war was by comparison to today's war against Islam much safer for the West even with the threat of nuclear weapons and as it proved winnable. The fight against Islam is a very different situation as having bigger and better arms does not guarantee success; battles can be won yes but the wars in the end cannot. The West now is also in decline economically and the quality of leadership is at an all time low. The dilemma for the West is how to counter the threat that Islam poses as fighting numerous little wars and aiding regime change is not weakening Islam but strengthening it. Apart from which the enemy is as much within as it is without. If the West carries on with current economic, social policies and military strategies then that will only hasten the end of the West as we know it. We had all better brush up on the Koran. To me the West has been reduced to it's current sorry state by our embracing too many socialist policies and practices since the end of WWII. This lead me to think about what actually was the difference between socialism and Islam and it popped into my head that one offers paradise in the next life and the other in this one. I do not know if that was an original thought of mine or I had seen or heard it somewhere else before.

“In the Great War eight million people were destroyed because two persons, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his Consort, had been shot. The Second World War offers even more preposterous ironies. Ostensibly begun to guarantee the sovereignty of Poland, that war managed to bring about Poland’s bondage and humiliation. Air bombardment, which was supposed to shorten the war, prolonged it …” – Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory.

Thanks, Wilson. Isn't it interesting the way history turns? There was America at the end of the Cold War as the world's only super power, the number one nation. It's all been frittered away in one futile 'crusade' after another. Meanwhile China conserves its power and watches.

About Me

Hi, I'm Ana! History is my passion -and that is not too strong a word - but I also enjoy politics, philosophy, art, literature and travel. In addition I have a deep interest in witchcraft, in all of the ancient arts. Apart from that I'm a keen sportswoman. I play lacrosse and tennis, but I love riding most of all. I have my own horse, Annette.